Tuesday, November 27, 2012

After watching Sophia use her dress to clean the oatmeal off
her chops for the 9 billionth time while a perfectly good napkin, pristine with
neglect lay at the side of her plate I told her:

“Sophia, I am going to pin a sign on your dress reminding
you to PLEASE USE YOUR NAPKIN. It’s just
gross. Look you have oatmeal sticking to
the bottom of your dress. There’s milk
in that, if we don’t wash it out it’s going to start to smell.

“No, mommy. It’s
not. It’s just a little oatmeal. And here, I rubbed it off, see?” There was

“I want you to start using your napkin to wipe your face.”

“OKAY!” she said, exasperated.

But later, when she dribbled toothpaste out of the corner of
her mouth, she used her sleeve to sop it up.

“Sophia! Please don’t wipe your face with your shirt. Now you have an oatmeal AND a toothpaste
stain.” She was beginning to look like a
ragamuffin, and we had to leave for school.”

“SORRY!” Sophia screamed back, sounding anything but sorry,
and reached for the towel I had laid out, wiping her already-clean mouth.

I took a deep cleansing breath.

Before Sophia was born, someone gave me an album of
children’s music, The Bottle Let Me Down.
It was full of funny, silly, sometimes irreverent songs, like “Funky
Butt” and “I’m My Own Grandpa.” But
there was one tune on the album that I simply didn’t get: “Don’t Wipe Your Face on Your Shirt” by the
Cornell Hurd Band.

Dad? What is it that we do that really makes you
crazy?

Well, I’m glad you
asked. Now, you boys know that I give
you guys a lot of room in this family.
But there’s one thing, just one thing, that absolutely drives me nuts.

Look out! He’s going to sing!

Daddy’s from the
do-your-own-thing generation,

No I’m not afraid of
mud, or grime or dirt

But you boys must
understand, there’s a line drawn in the sand,

Don’t wipe your face
on your shirt!

“Of all the things to freak out about, this is what makes
this guy crazy? His kids wiping their
faces on their shirts?” I said to Kevin, with all the incredulity of someone
who is not-yet-a-parent. Kevin was in
full agreement. Aside from thinking that
the song was kind of gross in general, e.g., You can eat that tub of lard but when you thrown up in the yard, don’t
wipe your face on your shirt,he
didn’t recognize wiping one’s face on one’s shirt to be an issue of song-worthy
proportions.

Now, five years later, I understand what all the exasperated
singing is about. This face-wiping thing
really is a problem. It moves a parent
to artistic expression of the deep frustration that arises from having a child
who will not use a napkin. At least it does
in my household.

Of course, I have to ask myself, why do I care? What’s it to me if she has a thin line of
snot snaking down her sleeve, like the opalescent trail of a slug?

Well, for one, I have to look at it.

And others have to look at it too. I have to admit—I worry about what people
will think when my daughter shows up at school, a friend’s house, a special
event wearing a three-course meal. I
suppose it wouldn’t drive me quite so crazy if we kept this entre-nous (and
given that Sophie doesn’t stay in any one outfit for more than a couple of
hours, I needn’t be all that concerned—if I don’t like what she’s wearing, the
one thing I can count on—she’ll change).
But I do want my child to appear somewhat kempt in public.

So, imagine my great joy and surprise when, this weekend,
after dribbling some milk from her cereal down her chin, Sophie reached for her
napkin and sopped it up.

I cheered! “You did
it! You remembered to use your napkin!”
I cried.

“I don’t want you to hang a sign on me mommy.” Sophie explained. The corners of her mouth turned down. “All the kids at school will laugh at me!”

What am I, Mommy Dearest?
I didn’t mean for her to bear a scarlet letter screaming the sin of
wiping her face on her shirt. I was sick
of nagging her. It was an intervention
born of the recognition that what I was doing wasn’t working. I had more of an
only-during-mealtimes-in-the-home, “employees must wash hands” kind of vision. In truth, I thought it would be funny—something
that we could laugh about. A gentle, but
concrete reminder to change her behavior until it became an automatic
habit. Turns out, the fear of
humiliation she built up in her mind was a much more effective teacher.

I felt a little guilty about this. But when she got up from the breakfast table
today tidy and grime-free, her napkin crumbled alongside her bowl, smeared with
the detritus of the morning meal, I felt satisfied. Whatever I did in my fit of exasperation,
worked.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Tired of the same old succulent bird year after year? Been scouring the Internet looking for a
cutting-edge turkey preparation techniques?
Anyone coming to dinner against whom you have a massive grudge?

Well, look no further!

It’s that time of year again, when the culinary geniuses of
Miss Judi’s four-year-old class at the Children’s Workshop Preschool put their
little noggins together to devise a recipe for Thanksgiving dinner that
will rock your world (or at least your intestines).

Here we go, yo:

Go hunt for a turkey on a mountain or in the
woods.

If you can’t find one, buy it at Shop Rite.(This is not meant to be an endorsement of
Shop Rite.I’m sure if you can’t find
one there, you can probably find a perfectly good turkey on a mountain.)

Put it in the trunk of our car.(It may be an important detail that the
turkey goes in the trunk of the 4-year-olds’ car, not your car.)

Take it out of the package.

Wash it with water and cut the nasty stuff off
with scissors or a knife.(If it was up
to me, there would be no turkey left after this step.)

Stuff the turkey with vegetables and juice and
wasabi (not for the faint hearted) and beans and carrots and apples and rice
and stinky seaweed.

Heat the oven to a trillion hot.Or 1000 degrees.

Cook it for 100 hours.

Take
it out and eat it.

Happy Thanksgiving, dear readers!

Disclaimer: Any follower of this recipe (or guest at the
table of the recipe follower) holds Melissa, Ms. Judi and the four-year-old
class at the Children’s Workshop Preschool harmless for any damages, including
illness or death, that result from following any and all of the above
instructions for cooking a turkey.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

This is what Sophia asks me at the breakfast table the other
morning. And because I speak her
language (or perhaps she speaks mine) or maybe we have developed the capacity
to understand each other in a way that transcends speech, I know what she is
asking me. When one of us says something
bizarre and convoluted, the other looks past the words to the place where they
point, and all is illuminated.

This is what she is saying:
Mom, I really don’t want to wear pants, because, in my opinion, they
aren’t fancy. I have an odd compulsion
to be fancy, despite the little exposure I have had to the world of
fashion. Fancy, by the way, does not
imply couture. Rather, it is a strange
and unique aesthetic that incorporates bright colors, sequins, mismatched
patterns, sandals with socks, tutus, gobs of plastic jewelry, and a
tiara. Coats, pants, and anything that
smacks of warmth or masculinity is decidedly not fancy. But, if fashion stars, i.e. princesses (or
maybe women in magazines), somewhere in this world sanction the wearing of
pants, I might consider being complicit with your request to wear a pair on
this 40 degree morning. That is, if and
only if I may wear a dress over said pants and other fancy things as well.

The right chess move is obvious to me in this moment.

“Of course they do, honey." I take it one step further, "Fashion stars even wear coats."

“Do they wear underwear?”

“Most of the time.”

She considers this for a moment and then delivers her verdict,
“Okay. I’ll wear pants. But only if I can wear a dress over it. And my Belle crown.”

“That’s fine by me, kid.”

I have lowered my standards considerably when it comes to
outfitting Sophie. There are only two rules
I insist upon:

That her clothing be appropriate for the current
temperature.

That she does not fish her favorite dresses out
of the hamper when they are dirty.

What I find fascinating is that fanciness somehow does not
take into account dirt. Sophie has no qualms about wearing something she has

Worn three days in a row

Wiped her face on

Spilled food/paint/other staining substances on.

Apparently, this is a little known law of fashion: A thing is inherently fancy (or not) and its
current state of cleanliness does not impact its degree of fanciness.

My mother would be quick to interject that I lived by this
law in the third grade and that my favorite jeans (the ones with the zippers on
the back pockets) would have walked away by themselves if she didn’t sneak into
my room at night and wash them once a week.

But then, for me, it wasn’t a fancy thing. It was a tomboy thing. Sophie wouldn’t be caught dead in jeans.

Which is why, today, when we were driving home after
catching a play at the local community theater Sophia and I had this
conversation:

“Mom, tonight to the party I want to wear a dress, the same
leggings and pink socks I am wearing right now, and my sandals.” Sophie changes outfits at least three times a
day.

“That’s fine,” I say, “as long as it’s a long-sleeved dress,
I’m down with that.”

Sophie eyes me in my jeans and leather jacket, “You can wear
what you’re wearing, mom. You don’t have
to change.”

I know, in our special word-transcending way what she
means. She is not simply approving my
wardrobe for public appearance the way, say, a mortified teenager might. Oh no.
She wants me to be LESS FANCY than her.
Jeans = not fancy. I check this
out:

“Sophie, are you saying that because you don’t want me to be
fancy?”

“Yes.” I love how up
front five-year-olds are.

“Okay. In truth, Soph, I
have no desire to change my clothes, so I will be going as is.”

Sophie relaxes into her car seat with a satisfied smile.

“Oh, and I’m not wearing a coat,” she informs me. “My dress will be strong enough.”

“That’s where you’re wrong missy. I don’t care what you wear underneath it, but
you’re wearing a coat.”

She sighs. Her fancy
factor depreciated by the coat.

“Okay, but I’m taking it off as soon as we get there.”

“As you wish, but even fashion stars wear coats in 40-degree
weather.”

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

As I woke up before the dawn met the night and told it to
scram, I glanced at my clock: 5:11. I had automatically woken four minutes before
my alarm was to go off. That’s what
happens when I’m stressed.

I realized that I could already be too late.

I dressed, pulling on the same black stretch pants I had
worn yesterday (who’s gonna know?) washed my face and combed my hair down with
water, forgetting to brush my teeth (which I would later regret), gathered my
paperwork, and made the first cup of caffeinated coffee I’ve had in
months. It felt like a race day.

But that’s because it IS a race day. A race to be first in a line-up of desperate,
working parents. A race to the top of the list.

Kindergarten registration day.

I rolled out of the driveway at 5:33, my stomach in
knots. How many would already be there,
huddled in the cars, light rain falling?
How long had they been there? Were
there other parents more hardcore then me?

Yes.

I rolled into the lot and immediately began counting
cars. In the first row I could see…1, 2,
3, 4, 5…my heart began to sink. There
are only 15 precious slots and one third of them are sitting right in front of
me. Why didn’t I wake up sooner? Why am I always living on the edge? I coasted deeper into the lot where cars were
lined up against the playground gate…6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12…and one car on the
side…13.

I am number 14. The
clouds parted, the heavens opened and the angels began to sing. She’s in.

I pulled into a spot, let my car idle, and commenced the
hour and a half wait until the director was to open the doors to let us
in.

Not too bad. I can
easily kill an hour and half. I brought
books, caffeine, my computer. I’m
set. I have heard the horror stories
about parents camping out the night before at other schools.

It could be a lot worse.

I think I need to turn on the heat in here. My fingers are a tad numb. Hold on a sec.

Ah. Much better. So as I was saying, I really have nothing to
cry about. Number 16 will, but not
me.

A figure in a white jacket strides towards my car. She’s got a pen in her hand. And an envelope. I open my door before she can tap on the
glass. It’s Ella’s mom. She’s put together a list. “I’m having it notarized,” she joked.

I gleefully sign my name next to the number fourteen. “So you’re not putting your kid in [our
public school kindergarten} either?” she asks.
This had not been an easy decision, but at the end of the day I decided
it was best for Sophia, given that I was planning on working longer hours next
year and that kindergarten in our town is only half-day. “No…she’s so happy here, and I’m going to be
working….”

“I get it.” She tells
me. “It was either this or the Friends
school. But I didn’t want her to have to
make two transitions.”

We talk for a moment about how ridiculous this is. How ridiculous we are for being here. But what else can we do?

“I talked to the director to get a sense of when I should
get here this morning.”

“I did that too. Miss
Colleen said 5:15, so I knew I had to get here an hour earlier.” Ella’s mom was number 2. “But I practically live in the school’s
backyard (she gestured across the way).
I was surprised I wasn’t here first.
They must have got here at
3:45.”

I am so not hardcore.
“Wow. They told me 6:15…but if I
had listened….I don’t understand why they do it this way, pitting parent
against parent. I suggested to them that
they do this by lottery, and they seemed surprised, like they hadn’t considered
it before.”

“What did they say?”

“Oh, just that it was a good idea for next year, but they
had already sent out all the information….”

“Well, in past years, it wasn’t like this. They said last year was a breeze.”

It’s 6:07. Number 15
just pulled in. That’s it. Technically, I made the cut with a half-hour
to spare. (Hard to believe that 13
people arrived before 5:30 and just me between then and now. I guess I lie somewhere between desperate and
carefree on the continuum of parents-who-want-in.) Ella’s mom went off to sign him on to The
List. (I am glad someone is keeping a
list. There is order. My spot is secure. I am glad it’s not me, for I realize in keeping
that list, she will eventually have to tell others they are not on it.)

Aw, number 16 just arrived.
He’s getting out to count cars. I
watch his shoulders fall as he climbs back in behind the wheel and pulls out
his cell phone. I bet he has to call his
wife and tell her he missed it by one.

17. 18. Thank goodness I got here when I did. I guess there really was a chance I wouldn’t
get in.

19. This is getting
depressing. Like any race, there are
winners and losers. Ella’s mom, the one keeping the list, is now
joined by another mom—to provide her with moral support—as she breaks the bad
news to the late arrivals. They trudge
past my car, heads lowered, to the line of SUVs forming.

Morning has broken, but it is a grim sky, light filtered
through a wall of clouds. Rain is
beginning to fall.

I better fill out the damn form, so when I get there, I’m
ready to claim my place. I didn’t want
to do it ahead of time. I didn’t want to
jinx it.

An older woman with glasses emerges from the front of the
building, the front door of her house that is attached to the school. Everyone pours out of their cars and cheers as
she walks up the path to the main entrance. She’s 20 minutes ahead of schedule.

The celebration is brief. Ella’s mom reads out from the list as parents
dutifully take their place in line. There is a bit of confusion as both men in
positions 15 and 16 are named Matt—so Ella’s mom reads through the list again, this
time with last names, and the men stand accordingly. I turn and realize there are mostly men at
the back of the line. Two of them I know
fairly well. One had previously
expressed to me how much he needed his daughter to get in. I had talked to the wife of the other, who
said the same. How did they find
themselves at the back of the line, I wonder?
Did they take what the director said at face value? Did they doubt the
degree of competition for the spots?
Could they simply not get out of the house any sooner?

I wave. They wave
back with somber faces.

The one woman who is behind me looks as though she is about
to cry. She is dressed in a suit,
holding an infant in one hand and a toddler in the other, while the would-be
kindergartener stands compliantly at her side.
I imagine that she has done all of this alone—awakened three children,
fed them, dressed them, got ready herself, packed everyone in the car only to
arrive too late.

Inwardly, I am deeply relieved, but I find it impossible to
smile myself. Any giddiness at my
success is mediated by the disappointment of others.

I did not want to be this woman’s competitor. I did not want to edge out the parents of my
daughter’s friends. I quietly hand in my
form and head home to wake my fortunate four-year-old.

Sunday, November 11, 2012

I have a recurring nightmare in which some emergency
occurs—a fire, a car accident, a fall—and I rush to the phone to dial 911, but
my fingers fail me. Either I repeatedly
misdial the number, or my fingers are flaccid and boneless. I can’t dial.
I can’t save whoever is hurt. I
can’t fix the problem.

When I wake, I am left with a sense of my impotence that
takes me a while to shake off.

Consequently, there is part of me that believes I would fail
to act, or at least screw up royally if ever faced with a crisis in my waking
life. And, so far, my track record isn’t
that great. Take, for example, that time
I ran away from a bear.

No, I’ll save that for another time.

Instead, let me tell you about yesterday, at Sophie’s fifth
birthday party. We were rocking out in
the basement. The night before I had
made a playlist of all Sophie’s favorite, completely inappropriate, pop songs,
which she has either picked up from the ether or learned from her girlfriends
on the playground at preschool (e.g., We Are Never Ever Getting Back
Together). Katy Perry was on a
continuous loop. I had passed out glow
sticks, Kevin turned out all the lights and trained a flashlight on our junior
disco ball, and another parent turned a strobe light on in his phone.

No, we didn’t have a sudden rash of seizures. The kids were all jumping to the beat, waving
their glow sticks, delighted and shrieking with the strangeness of it.

All I knew is that Kevin scooped up Sophie, grabbed me, and
commanded, “Come with me,” with what sounded like grave concern.

My husband never panics.
He is just the sort of person you would want in a crisis: clear-headed, definitive, swiftly moves
towards action. In situations I consider
dire, he is a rock. Like when I started
hemorrhaging after giving birth. He fought
his way past the doubting nurse (“Its hemorrhoids. She’ll be fine. I’ll get her a Tucks pad.”), to the
attending, who fetched my OB and had me on the operating table as fast as was
institutionally possible. (Had I been
alone, I surely would have died. I told
the nurse that the pain I was experiencing—the worst pain I had ever had in my
life, far more intense that the recent experience of giving birth—was a “five”
out of ten.)

But it seemed to me he was panicking now and that scared me,
because I knew that I was being called upon to act clearly, swiftly and
definitively myself. He held Sophie in
such a way that I could not discern what had happened. As we carried her upstairs, towards the
bathroom on the second floor, I could imagine all sorts of horrors. I spied something red on the floor—was that
her blood? Had she fallen? Cut her self on the disco ball (that had
happened to another child, last year who curiously reached up to touch
it)?

Kevin held her over the sink. “She bit into the glow stick. The fluid is all inside her mouth. We need to call poison control.”

This was not something I had imagined or predicted. She’s five!
She should know better!

No, this
was not the time to scold her.

Get it out, my instincts told me. So I turned on the water and started flushing
her mouth, sweeping with my fingers, to clean out the glowing red goo. As I did, I accidentally triggered her gag
reflex.

Yes, that’s it. Get
her to throw it up. Get it out of
her, the inner voice commanded. I tickled the back of her throat
again and she retched, bringing up what was either the glow stick fluid or the
pizza she ate a half-an-hour before. I
did this several times until it seemed like she was done. There was nothing left to void.

Remarkably, my daughter who cannot stand to take a bath, who
claims it hurts when I washed her hair, compliantly allowed me to do this most
invasive of acts. I said soothing words
as I did it, “That’s it. Get it all
out. You’re going to be okay, honey.” She seemed to understand the gravity of the
moment.

And when I was satisfied.
I raced downstairs, grabbed my phone, ran to the refrigerator where I
had posted the number for Poison Control three years earlier and dialed the
number with rapidity and ease.

I experienced some momentary glee at the effectiveness of my
fingers.

Poison Control picked up on the first ring. “Poison Control. What’s your emergency?” (Or something like that. To be honest, I can’t remember what he said.)

“My daughter just bit through a glow stick and swallowed the
contents.”

“When did this happen, ma’am?”

“Two minutes ago. I
tried to make her throw up….”

“NO NO NO NO NO!” He interrupted me, “DON’T DO THAT!”

“I already did,” I confessed. How could that have not been the right thing
to do?

“Then it didn’t happen two minutes ago,” he scolded me.

“I don’t know,” I said, a bit humiliated, and certainly
disturbed because I still didn’t know why making her throw up was so
awful. “Maybe it was 10 minutes? 15?”

“Non-toxic? It’s going
to be okay?” Somebody handed me the
package that the glow sticks came in.
“It says right here on the package, ‘Do not ingest.’”

“Well, you’re not supposed
to eat it,” the guy told me, “but it’s not going to harm you if you do. It kind of tastes like biting into a jalepeno
pepper. It’s hot. Unpleasant.
But not dangerous.”

“Thank god!”

“But what you did could have created a much worse situation
than ingesting the fluid. The American
Pediatric Association states that you should never make a child throw up after
your child swallows a toxic substance.
She could have aspirated it into her lungs.”

“Oh.”

“Or, if it was
toxic, it could have caused worse damage to her esophagus coming back up.”

“I see. I really had
no idea…I thought it was the right thing to do.”

“No, it wasn’t. The
first thing you should do is call us.
So, if you’ve already thoroughly cleaned out her mouth, I would just get her to
drink some water or milk. But she’ll be
fine.”

“Thank you so much! I
will!” I hung up the phone. He was kind of harsh, but I was deeply
relieved to know everything was going to be fine. I ran upstairs. Kevin was softly telling Sophie that we might
have to take her to the hospital.

“But what about my cake?”
Sophie asked, appalled.

“It’s fine,” I interrupted.
“I called Poison Control. It’s
non-toxic.” Kevin’s forehead
uncreased. “But the guy on the phone
reprimanded me. Said I never should have
made her throw up. That she could have
aspirated it into her lungs.”

“Huh.” Kevin mused.
“I didn’t think to do it. I just
thought we should call Poison Control, but when you started doing it, I thought
it was a good idea. I would have done
the same thing, if I had thought of it.”

I felt somewhat vindicated.

Okay, maybe it was the absolute wrongest thing to do (like
running from a bear)—but my cool-headed husband would have done it if he had thought of it. And I had been clear headed. I didn’t hesitate.

Welcome to my blog!

About Me

This blog chronicles a psychologist-mom's efforts to do right by her child amid the pressures of society, the recommendations of "experts," and the noise in her head by trusting her instincts. Through storytelling and essays she exposes her anxieties, shares her aspirations and reflects on the practice of being a parent. Melissa invites you to share what moves/irritates/inspires you...or to create a dialogue by offering your point of view. She is also interested in professional writing opportunities, especially on or employing reflective parenting.